Rosemary Ahtuangaruak sees what’s different. The permafrost is melting. The landscape is altered. It’s harder for younger people to pursue caribou as their elders did.
“You go out hunting and there are changes to our lands and waters,” Ahtuangaruak, the mayor of Nuiqsut, a village of about 500 people on Alaska’s North Slope, said in a phone interview. “The animals are no longer in areas where your grandfather taught your husband to hunt and where he taught his son,” she said. “Now there’s a gravel mine related to the oil and gas development.”
Ahtuangaruak worries Nuiqsut, where people rely on subsistence hunting of migratory herds of caribou, could go hungry if ConocoPhillips gets approval to drill for oil on federal land west of town. That project, called Willow, could thwart caribou coming north during the spring and prevent them from birthing calves. And if the offspring don’t recognize, or imprint, on that area, she said Nuiqsut could lose the animals for good.
